Latency measurement

ABSTRACT

Touchscreen testing techniques are described. In one or more implementations, a piece of conductor (e.g., metal) is positioned as proximal to a touchscreen device and the touchscreen device is tested by simulating a touch of a user. This technique may be utilized to perform a variety of different testing of a touchscreen device, such as to test latency and probabilistic latency. Additional techniques are also described including contact geometry testing techniques.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. Section 119(e) to U.S.Provisional Patent Application No. 61/435,672, filed Jan. 24, 2011 andtitled “Touchscreen Testing,” the entire disclosure of which is herebyincorporated by reference.

BACKGROUND

Display and input techniques utilized by computing devices are everevolving. For example, initial computing devices were provided withmonitors. A user interacted with the computing device by viewing simpletext on the monochrome monitor and entering text via a keyboard thatcould then be viewed on the monitor. Other techniques were thensubsequently developed, such as graphical user interfaces and cursorcontrol devices.

Display and input techniques have continued to evolve, such as to sensetouch using a touchscreen display of a computing device to recognizegestures. A user, for instance, may interact with a graphical userinterface by inputting a gesture using the user's hand that is detectedby the touchscreen display. However, traditional techniques that wereutilized to test touchscreen displays were often inaccurate andtherefore were typically inadequate to test the touchscreen displays assuitable for intended use of the device.

SUMMARY

Touchscreen testing techniques are described. In one or moreimplementations, a piece of conductor (e.g., metal) is positioned asproximal to a touchscreen device and the touchscreen device is tested bysimulating a touch of a user. This technique may be utilized to performa variety of different testing of a touchscreen device, such as to testlatency and probabilistic latency. Additional techniques are alsodescribed including contact geometry testing techniques.

This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in asimplified form that are further described below in the DetailedDescription. This Summary is not intended to identify key features oressential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended tobe used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subjectmatter.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The detailed description is described with reference to the accompanyingfigures. In the figures, the left-most digit(s) of a reference numberidentifies the figure in which the reference number first appears. Theuse of the same reference numbers in different instances in thedescription and the figures may indicate similar or identical items.

FIG. 1 is an illustration of an environment in an example implementationthat is operable to utilize touchscreen testing techniques describedherein.

FIG. 2 is an illustration of a system in an example implementationshowing a test apparatus of FIG. 1 as being implemented using acomputing device.

FIG. 3 is an illustration of a representation of a matrix of touchamplitudes

FIG. 4 depicts an implementation example of the system of FIG. 2.

FIG. 5 depicts an example distribution histogram that describes a rangeof reported latencies.

FIG. 6 depicts an example distribution histogram that describes an idealuniform distribution.

FIG. 7 depicts an example histogram distribution of ideal hardwarelatency for the bottom right corner of a display device.

FIG. 8 depicts an example implementation showing first and second casesin which a touch occurs directly before and after a scan by a displaydevice, respectively.

FIG. 9 is an illustrated of an example implementation showing aconductor configured as a flat washer being used to test a touchscreenof a touchscreen device.

FIG. 10 is a flow diagram depicting a procedure in an exampleimplementation in which grounding is adjusted and a touchscreen deviceis tested.

FIG. 11 illustrates various components of an example device that can beimplemented as any type of computing device as described with referenceto FIGS. 1 and 2 to implement embodiments of the techniques describedherein.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Overview

Conventional techniques that were utilized to test touchscreen deviceswere often difficult to reproduce. Consequently, test results from theseconventional techniques could be inaccurate and difficult to interpretand thus often failed for their intended purpose.

Touchscreen testing techniques are described herein. In one or moreimplementations, techniques are described in which a touch input of apart of a user's body is simulated by using a conductor (e.g., anelectrical conductor such as a piece of metal) that is grounded. Forexample, the conductor may be shaped to approximate a shape and/or areaof a portion of a user's finger that is typically used to contact atouchscreen device and grounded to mimic contact of a user's finger withthe device. The metal may then alternate between grounded and ungrounded(i.e., floating) states to mimic contact and non-contact by a user'sfinger, respectively. Thus, the touchscreen device may be tested usingthe metal contact without having to move the metal contact (e.g., usinga mechanical switch). Additional techniques are also described that donot involve use of the conductor. Further discussion of these techniquesmay be found in the following discussion in corresponding sections.

In the following discussion, an example environment is first describedthat may employ the testing techniques described herein. Exampleprocedures are then described which may be performed in the exampleenvironment as well as other environments. Consequently, performance ofthe example procedures is not limited to the example environment and theexample environment is not limited to performance of the exampleprocedures.

Example Environment

FIG. 1 depicts an environment 100 in an example implementation thatincludes a test apparatus 102 that is suitable to test a touchscreendevice 104. The touchscreen device 104 may be configured in a variety ofways. For example, the touchscreen device 104 may be configured as partof a mobile communication device such as a mobile phone, a portablegame-playing device, a tablet computer, as part of a traditionalcomputing device (e.g., a display device that is part of a laptop orpersonal computer), and so on.

Additionally, the touchscreen 106 of the touchscreen device 104 may beconfigured in a variety of ways. For example, the touchscreen 106 of thetouchscreen device 104 may include sensors that are configured to detectproximity (e.g., contact) with the touchscreen 106. Touch sensors 110are typically used to report actual contact with the touchscreen 106,such as when being touched with a finger of a user's hand 108.

Examples of such touch sensors 110 include capacitive touch sensors. Forinstance, in projected capacitance an X-Y grid may be formed across thetouchscreen using near optically transparent conductors (e.g., indiumtin oxide) to detect contact at different X-Y locations on thetouchscreen 106. Other capacitance techniques are also contemplated,such as surface capacitance, mutual capacitance, self-capacitance, andso on. Further, other touch sensors 110 are also contemplated in otherinstances, such as infrared, optical imaging, dispersive signaltechnology, acoustic pulse recognition, and so on.

Regardless of the type of touch sensors 110 used, inputs detected by thetouch sensors 110 may then be processed by the touch module 112 todetect characteristics of the inputs, which may be used for a variety ofpurposes. For example, the touch module 112 may recognize that the touchinput indicates selection of a particular object, may recognize one ormore inputs as a gesture usable to initiate an operation of thetouchscreen device 104 (e.g., expand a user interface), and so forth.However, this processing may rely upon the accuracy of the inputs andtherefore conventional techniques that were utilized to test thetouchscreen 106 could result in an inaccurate touchscreen making it tomarket, which could hinder a user's interaction with the device.

In one or more implementations described herein, contact with atouchscreen 106 by a finger of a user's hand 108 is emulated by the testapparatus 102. For example, the test apparatus 102 may include a testmodule 114 and switch 116, which are configured to place a metal pieceagainst the touchscreen 106. The switch 116, for instance, may beconfigured as a projected capacitance switch circuit that is used toalternate the conductor between grounded and ungrounded states. In thisway, the switch 116 may effectively emulate a finger of a user's handwithout moving the conductor. In other words, “up” and “down” touchevents may mimic a press and removal of the user's finger withoutmovement. These techniques may be utilized for a variety of differenttechniques, examples of which may be found in the correspondingsections.

Generally, any of the functions described herein can be implementedusing software, firmware, hardware (e.g., fixed logic circuitry), or acombination of these implementations. The terms “module,”“functionality,” and “logic” as used herein generally representsoftware, firmware, hardware, or a combination thereof. In the case of asoftware implementation, the module, functionality, or logic representsprogram code that performs specified tasks when executed on a processor(e.g., CPU or CPUs). The program code can be stored in one or morecomputer readable memory devices. The features of the techniquesdescribed below are platform-independent, meaning that the techniquesmay be implemented on a variety of commercial computing platforms havinga variety of processors.

For example, the test apparatus 102 and/or the touchscreen device 104may be implemented using a computing device. The computing device mayalso include an entity (e.g., software) that causes hardware of thecomputing device to perform operations, e.g., processors, functionalblocks, a “system-on-a-chip,” and so on. For example, the computingdevice may include a computer-readable medium that may be configured tomaintain instructions that cause the computing device, and moreparticularly hardware of the computing device to perform operations.Thus, the instructions function to configure the hardware to perform theoperations and in this way result in transformation of the hardware toperform functions. The instructions may be provided by thecomputer-readable medium to the computing device through a variety ofdifferent configurations.

One such configuration of a computer-readable medium is signal bearingmedium and thus is configured to transmit the instructions (e.g., as acarrier wave) to the hardware of the computing device, such as via anetwork. The computer-readable medium may also be configured as acomputer-readable storage medium and thus is not a signal bearingmedium. Examples of a computer-readable storage medium include arandom-access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM), an optical disc,flash memory, hard disk memory, and other memory devices that may usemagnetic, optical, and other techniques to store instructions and otherdata.

Adjustment of Grounding

FIG. 2 is an illustration of a system 200 in an example implementationshowing the test apparatus 102 of FIG. 1 as being implemented using acomputing device 202. Although illustrated separately, the computingdevice 202 includes a microcontroller board 204 (e.g., AT90USBKEY), theswitch 116 configured as a software driven hardware switch 206 that iselectrically coupled to a metal contact, and a touchscreen device 104with is the device under test. In this example the touchscreen device104 is configured as having a mutual or self-capacitance touch screen.

The computing device 202 is illustrated as including a test managermodule 208 that is representative of functionality to manage the testingof the touchscreen device 104. The test manager module 208, forinstance, may execute an application to synchronize 210 clocks (e.g.,timers) on computing device 202 and the microcontroller board 204 andthen drive 212 the microcontroller board 204.

Once a command is received by the microcontroller board 204 from thecomputing device 202, the microcontroller board 204 may trigger 214 thesoftware driven hardware switch 206, such as to alternate betweengrounded and ungrounded (e.g., floating) states. Although a singleswitch is shown, it should be readily apparent that the system 200 mayincorporate other numbers of switches, e.g., two, three, or even more,and the switch 116 may incorporate more than one grounded-metal contact.Thus, contact 216 of a grounded metal portion of the switch 116 with thetouchscreen device 104 may be used to emulate both a touch and lack of atouch on the touchscreen device 104 under test by alternating betweenthe states.

The touchscreen device 104 may then report contact through an HID report218 to the computing device 202. For example, the HID report 218 maypropagate through a touch input stack 220 to be reported to the testmanager module 208, e.g., as WM_INPUT and WM_POINTER message in aWndProc function. The test manager module 208 may then process thesemessages and provide visual feedback, such as in a graphical userinterface. Other examples of data that may be processed include HID overI²C.

In an example system 200, the drive 212 signal may occur every twoseconds although other time periods are also contemplated, such asnon-periodical time intervals. This may result in a “contact down” eventfor two seconds, followed with a “contact up” event for the next twoseconds by alternating between grounded and ungrounded states,respectively. LEDs disposed on the microcontroller board 204 may be usedindicate both “up” and “down” events. Additionally, a rectangle in a topleft corner of a display device of the computing device 202 may changecolor each time a WM_INPUT report is received.

As stated above, the test manager module 208 (e.g., through a hsyncapplication) may be used to drive the microcontroller board 204 bysending “down” and “up” events at predefined intervals (e.g., twoseconds) although other intervals are also contemplated. The testmanager module 208 may also be used to listen for raw HID report 218messages from the touchscreen device 104, e.g., WM_INPUT message. Uponreceipt of each message, the test manager module 208 may render arectangle (e.g., in a top left corner of a display device of thecomputing device 202), e.g., with a different color to provide feedbackalthough other feedback mechanisms are also contemplated. A log file mayalso be generated by the test manager module 208 to describe the testperformed. The microcontroller board 204 may also provide feedback,e.g., using two LEDs on the board in which one is for a “down” event andone is for an “up” event.

In an example situation when grounding is adjusted as described below,2*f HID reports 218 may be expected for each two seconds of a DOWNevent, in which “f” is a reporting rate for a touch sensor. For atouchscreen device 104 that reports at 105 Hz, for instance, two-hundredand ten messages may be expected to be received during the two secondsthe switch 116 emulates “down” through a grounded state. Further, it isexpected that few to no messages are received during the two seconds theswitch 116 emulates an “up” event mimicked by an ungrounded state, e.g.,expect for the first fifty to one hundred milliseconds right after the“up” even has been initiated due to latency. This information may bedescribed in the log file generated by the test manager module 208.

The test manager module 208, for instance, may generate three log files.The first log file may summarize “down” event latency, the second logfile may summarize “up” event latency, and the third log file maydescribe each of the logged information. An example of the log file isgiven in the following table:

freq = 2337920, [1; 1; 4157019762]: 67233 us ± 1898 us 194 [3; 1;4166371459]: 58207 us ± 1817 us 195 [5; 1; 4175723151]: 50159 us ± 1737us 195 [7; 1; 4185074835]: 54075 us ± 1661 us 195 [9; 1; 4194426526]:38007 us ± 1582 us 197 [11; 1; 4203778217]: 37887 us ± 1503 us 197 [13;1; 4213129911]: 49844 us ± 1423 us 195 [15; 1; 4222481609]: 53665 us ±1339 us 195 [17; 1; 4231833295]: 57747 us ± 1262 us 195 [19; 1;4241184991]: 53546 us ± 1180 us 195 [21; 1; 4250536685]: 57453 us ± 1098us 195 [23; 1; 4259888382]: 37387 us ± 2016 us 197 [25; 1; 4269240085]:37267 us ± 1943 us 197

The first column in this example represents an index of the event, witheach of the odd, the even events are in the “up” summary. The secondcolumn includes an identifier of the event, e.g., “1” equals “down” and“3” equals “up.” The third column includes a real time timestamp. Thefourth column describes actual measured “down”/“up” latency. The fifthcolumn indicates an absolute (maximal) error in measurement, and finallythe sixth column indicates number of messages received during the“down”/“up” event, e.g., during the two seconds of the event.

For reference, an excerpt from the second log file is presented below:

freq = 2337920, [2; 3; 4161695608]: 65997 us ± 1861 us 7 [4; 3;4171047311]: 57916 us ± 1776 us 6 [6; 3; 4180398993]: 61869 us ± 1703 us7 [8; 3; 4189750682]: 65743 us ± 1633 us 7 [10; 3; 4199102374]: 65658 us± 1551 us 7 [12; 3; 4208454063]: 57592 us ± 1479 us 6 [14; 3;4217805764]: 61475 us ± 1387 us 7 [16; 3; 4227157451]: 65488 us ± 1311us 7 [18; 3; 4236509143]: 57339 us ± 1231 us 6 [20; 3; 4245860840]:61275 us ± 1154 us 7 [22; 3; 4255212531]: 65165 us ± 1068 us 7 [24; 3;4264564234]: 65079 us ± 1977 us 7 [26; 3; 4273915933]: 57014 us ± 1901us 6

The sixth column may be used to adjust grounding. The groundingcondition may be adjusted in such way to obtain a repeatable number ofpackets for each measurement. In one or more implementations it isexpected this number may vary, e.g., in the example above it varies from194-197, which is about one to two percent of the time. For instance, avariation of up to ten percent may be considered permissible, andamounts above this value may be investigated. Once the setup andexpected parameters are understood, the actual grounding adjustment maybe performed.

In one or more implementations, a SNR (signal to noise ratio) is set ator near a highest possible value to select a proper grounding condition.One way to adjust grounding is to access the raw data, the procedure foradjusting ground in case this data is not available is also describedbelow.

When raw data is available (e.g., from the HID report 218), the SNR maybe calculated as follows. The amplitude of the touch (e.g., a change inan electrostatic field or changed perceived capacitance) as reported bythe digitizers of the touchscreen device 104 is compared to the noisereported by the digitizer. An upper limit (i.e., the “highest possiblevalue) to SNR may be established by simply pressing a finger against thedigitizer and reading the reported amplitude. It may be normal to havelower SNR values for emulated touch, even as low as half of the upperlimit.

First, the proper environmental conditions are selected. It may be notedparticular conditions may not be involved, but that results could dependon the conditions. Next, a readout is made in case a human finger ispressed against the digitizer, a matrix of amplitudes, which may besimilar to the table below and the image as shown in the exampleimplementation of FIG. 3. Particular care may be made to a maximum valueof the amplitude, which in this case would be 255. Reading out the noisemay not be performed as long the noise levels are not changed in thepresence of the switch, which may not happen in this case. The followingtable is an example of raw touch data, illustration of which is shown inthe example implementation 300 of FIG. 3.

10 20 30 22 6 16 106 246 118 16 14 182 255 255 30 10 64 236 120 14 10 612 16 8

In a next step, a metal contact that is electrically coupled to theswitch 116 is introduced to a touch digitizer of the touchscreen device104. This may effectively change a baseline of the digitizer, which mayinvolve a certain period for recalibrating. For example, a touchdigitizer may perform this automatically in a process referred to asre-baselining and may take from a fraction of a second up to twominutes. This process may be tracked by observing the raw data, e.g.,the HID report 218. Once noise levels in the area of the switch 116become similar or the same as in the remainder of the digitizer, thenext step is performed.

In some implementations, rebaselining may not be a trivial task for adigitizer and it could happen that digitizer does not reach averagenoise levels. If this is the case, the grounding may be adjusted. Thismay be done in several interactions, starting from a relatively smallamount grounding (e.g., no grounding) and gradually increasing theamount until finally a large metal piece that is not connected to thepower grid ground is attached, e.g., a metal table, unplugged computerbox and similar, use of a human body as a ground, and so on. Usually alack of grounding may enable the re-baselining. The minimum and maximumamount of metal used to allow re-baselining may be observed andrecorded. As a result of this procedure, ghost touches (e.g., falsepositive indications of touch) do not occur while switch is in passivestate in most instances.

The switch 116 may then be set to active state to emulate touch, e.g.,by placing the conductor in a grounded state. This procedure may besimilar to the previous procedure, but this time the highest amplitudeof the touch compared to the previously established upper bound isdetermined.

An optimal amount of grounding material may be selected given the fourmentioned values, e.g., in the middle of their intersection. Forexample, passive minimum and maximum may be lower than active minimumand maximum, thereby yielding the following intersection: [activeminimum, passive maximum].

After this process is concluded the following setup may be achieved.First, while in a passive state there are no ghost touches whereas whileactive there are no false negative touches that involve failure toreport a touch, i.e., a full frame rate is reported. Additionally, theaffected baseline may have the same noise distribution as the rest ofthe digitizer and the maximum amplitude may be the best possible (e.g.,best SNR)

In case raw data is not accessible a slightly indirect technique may beused in which reported touch events instead of the raw data from the HIDreport 218. In this case, the procedure starts with no groundingmaterial and a test is performed of both passive and actives states. Theamount of grounding is then gradually increased such that in a passivestate there are no ghost touches and in the active state there are nomissed touch reports, e.g., at a maximum frame rate. Minimum and maximumamounts of grounding are obtained such that two conditions above aremet. Finally, an approximate middle of this range is selected as theoptimal or near optimal grounding condition.

FIG. 4 depicts an implementation example 400 of the system 200 of FIG.2. In this example implementation 400, a RF JFET can be used as a highspeed switching circuit. It should be noted that this implementation maybe optimized for emulating a particular touch screen device. Forexample, the proposed grounding of the copper-clad board (e.g.,1.8″×3.9″) may be modified for implementation on different touchscreendevices as described above.

Latency Measurement

Latency is a measure of time delay experienced in the touch digitizersystem and accordingly latency measurement is a part of thetouchscreen's 106 digitizer evaluation process. Inherent latencyrepresents a tradeoff between several features: noise levels (SNR),sensitivity, power consumption, jitter, and so on. In this section, anautomated and repeatable way of measuring latency for capacitivetouchscreens 106 (both mutual and self-capacitance) is described, aswell as for other touchscreens.

End Points for Latency Measurement

A starting point for latency measurement may be defined as a moment atwhich contact is made with a touchscreen 106, e.g., a point in time atwhich a finger, stylus, actuator, or so on touches the touchscreen 106for the first time.

The end points for latency measurement may be defined in a variety ofways. For example, an end point may be defined to coincide with an endof scanning such that the end point is on the target side (firmware) andrepresents a moment at which the scanning of raw touch image iscompleted with the touch present on the image. In another example, theend point may be defined as the end of processing. This end point isexpected to be on the target side (firmware) and represents a moment atwhich touch is detected by the firmware and ready to be reported. In aUSB implementation, for instance, this may be the moment when targetinterrupt is set to active, informing host USB controller there is amessage ready.

In a further example, an end point is defined as a host entry (e.g.,computing device 202) point. This is the first end point on a host sideand represents a moment when the host operating system is first aware ofthe message from target touchscreen device 104. This may involve asignification part of the evaluation process of the touchscreen device104 and is usually referred to as “hardware latency”. In yet anotherexample, an end point may be defined to provide information about touchinput stack performance, such as to employ WndProc end points such asWM_INPUT, WM_TOUCH, and WM_POINTER messages.

In yet a further example, an end point may be defined as a screenfeedback end point (e.g., end-to-end latency), namely the moment visualfeedback is provided on the display device for the first time after thecontact occurs. This example incorporates rendering (applicationspecific), video card refresh rate (usually 60 Hz) and screen latency.

In the following section, a focus is made toward early host side endpoints, host entry point (hardware latency) and WndProc end points(touch input stack latency), although other points are alsocontemplated. Additional information about firmware end points (e.g.,scanning and processing) as well as a touchscreen device's 104 feedbackend point (e.g., end-to-end latency) may be found at the

“Probabilistic Latency Modeling” section below.

Actuator Circuit for Capacitive Touch Devices

As previously mentioned in relation to FIG. 1, touching of thetouchscreen device 104 by a user's hand 108 may be accurately emulatedwith placing a conductor (e.g., a piece of metal) on top of thetouchscreen device 104 and grounding the conductor. Accordingly, anelectrical actuator circuit may be used to ground the conductor ondemand and hence accurately emulate a “real” finger of the user's hand108.

It is worth noting that contact geometry is driven with the size of themetal piece and that shape and size of contact geometry is not an issuewith this approach, while it is for manual testing, especially when itcomes to repeatability. For more information please refer to “ContactGeometry Tests” section below.

As previously described, there are a wide variety of actuator circuitimplementations that may be used for the testing techniques describedherein. As shown in FIG. 4, for instance, an RF JFET switch can be usedto ground the conductor on demand with relatively low latency, e.g.,which may be well below 50 μs. A low capacitance fast Reed relay mayalso be used as a switching circuit. Further, a fast double pole singlethrow (DPST) switch for manual actuation may also be used in which afirst pole grounds the conductor and a second pole may be polled by themicrocontroller board 204 in order to establish the time of contact forminimal interference, e.g., minimal perceived capacitance.

Various mechanical sensors may also be used to detect acoustic waveswhich occur when finger touches the screen. In one implementation, amicrophone pressed against the screen may be used as a mechanical sensorto accurately detect a time at which a contact first occurred. This maybe implemented as a manual test which is non-invasive and hence usefulfor independently confirming measured results obtained with otherapproaches. In this section, non-manual implementations are describedwhich may allow performance of a large number of tests, which isbeneficial due to the probabilistic nature of the latency. For moreinformation, please refer to “Probabilistic Latency Modeling” sectionbelow.

Return will now be made to the example system 400 of FIG. 4. This system400 is but one of a variety of possible implementations of an RF JFETactuator circuit. It should be noted that this implementation may beoptimized for emulating a particular touch screen device, such as toselect a correct amount of grounding as described above in the“Adjusting Grounding” section.

As previously stated, the testing device may be configured to include anactuator, a conductor (e.g., an interchangeable copper contact), aswitch 116 such as a JFET RF switching circuit with optical coupling forinput logic, digital (logic) ground, a +5V digital input as well as aninput line for system grounding, a twelve volt battery, and a three pincontact.

The switch 116 may be driven in a variety of ways. For example, a COMport of the computing device 202 may be used to drive the switch 116. Inanother example, a USB based microcontroller board 204 may be used toprovide desired controllability.

By synchronizing the clocks on the computing device 202 and themicrocontroller board 204, feedback may be provided without introducingsynchronization errors. As previously mentioned, clocks on computingdevice 202 and microcontroller board 204 may be synchronized in order toreduce absolute error of measurement to a minimum. Depending on theresolution desired, three kinds of synchronization may bedifferentiated. In a first example, synchronization is not performed. Assuch, the computing device 202 sends requests to microcontroller board204 and the microcontroller performs the request immediately, e.g.,before acknowledging the receipt of the USB/HID packet. With thisapproach absolute error rate may fall between one to two millisecondsand the microcontroller board 204 is made available right away.

In a second example, simple synchronization is performed that may takefrom ten seconds and up to a minute. In this example, a clock on themicrocontroller board 204 is assumed to be running at a given previouslyestablished frequency. With this approach, error rate may be around onemillisecond in some implementations. In a third example, fullsynchronization is performed that may take from ten minutes and up to anhour in some implementations. In this case, the clock frequency of themicrocontroller board 204 is considered unknown and is establishedduring synchronization. Absolute error with this approach may be as lowas 500 μs.

As previously mentioned, several different setups may be used forlatency measurement, on example of which was described in relation toFIG. 2. The computing device 202 may be used to drive themicrocontroller board 204 and the microcontroller board 204 may be usedto drive the switch 116. Once a conductor attached to the switch 116 isplaced in active state (i.e., effectively emulating touch by grounding aconductor), a device under test (e.g., the touchscreen device 104) mayreport back to the computing device 202, e.g., using the HID report 218.With the HID report the circle is completed and the computing device 202has the information with which to measure latency. For instance, thisinformation may describe when the contact was initiated (which is beingdriven by the computing device 202) as well as when the HID report 218is received.

A variety of different endpoints may be used for latency measurement asdiscussed above. For WndProc endpoints, for instance, access to anoperating system's messaging system may be used to perform thismeasurement. For example, a window may be created by an application thathas a window class which specifies a “lpfnWndProc” parameter. TheWM_INPUT, WM_TOUCH and WM_POINTER messages may then be caught from aWndProc function. This approach allows WndProc messages latency to bemeasured with a single executable and without preparation on thecomputing device 202.

For user convenience, visual feedback may be incorporated for both thecomputing device 202 and the microcontroller board 204. On the computingdevice 202, for instance, a rectangle may be rendered in the top leftcorner of the screen whenever WM_INPUT message is received from thetouchscreen device 104, each time with a different color. This mayrepresent the visual indication that messages are being received fromthe device under test. On target side two LEDs may be used to indicatepassive and active state, one for each respectively. Computing device202 and target visual feedback allow user to be confident duringmeasurement as previously described.

A test driving signal (e.g., drive 212) may occur at defined intervals,e.g., every two seconds, at irregular intervals, and so on. In thisexample, the defined intervals may result in a contact DOWN event fortwo seconds, followed by the contact UP event for the next two seconds.Mentioned LEDs and top-left rectangle may indicate this behavior. In onesituation (e.g., assuming proper adjustment of grounding), a userperforming the test can expect 2*f HID reports for each two seconds ofDOWN event and no reports during UP event, except for a few reports inthe first ˜100 ms of the UP event due to the latency.

The measurements may be acquired during the test by the computing device202. After the test is concluded, the data may be serialized to storage.There may be three files serialized as previously described, e.g., afirst log file containing a summary for DOWN events, a second log filecontaining a summary for UP events, and a third log file with each ofthe recorded events as shown above.

Error in Measurement

In this section, the issue of error in measurement is addressed for thesetup described above. One type of error typically comes from host totarget communication channel, e.g., between the touchscreen device 104and the computing device 202. For example, USB polling frequency forfull speed devices may involve one millisecond of latency (in casebInterval parameter of the device descriptor is set to one) and host USBdriver processing stack may be added to this, which may yield up to twomilliseconds latency in this example. However, the rest of the system isnot typically responsible for more than 50 μs.

For example, the microcontroller board 204 may operate at 8/16 MHz andinstructions may be executed yielding latency of about 1 μs. The RF JFETswitch may similarity cause latency in an amount less than 1 μs. Whatremains is optocoupler (3-5 μs latency, as indicated by the data sheet)and transistor logic before RF JFET, and the latency introduced here maybe less than 45 μs, yielding less than 50 μs in the hardware altogether.Since 50 μs is significantly smaller than 500-2000 μs latency introducedby the host to target communication channel, this value may be ignoredin one or more implementations, although other implementations arecontemplated.

Interpreting Results

As further discussed in the “Probabilistic Latency Modeling” sectionbelow, touchscreen device 104 latency may involve a probabilisticmeasure. For example, this measure may depend on the position of contactwith the touchscreen device 104 as well as the relative position of thescan beam compared to this contact position at the moment of contact.Further, a complicated distribution may be obtained when inherentlatency of USB is added (e.g., related to the requested pollingfrequency through “bInterval” parameter in device descriptor) along withrelatively complex input stack processing.

Understanding a latency distribution may involve a relatively largenumber of measurements. For practical purposes a range of measuredlatencies as well as empirical distribution function may be sufficientfor the purposes of this investigation, although other implementationsare also contemplated.

One way of presenting empirical distribution function is thedistribution histogram. An example for the distribution histogram 500 ispresented in FIG. 5. From this histogram the range of reported latencies(from 56 to 66 ms) may be read. Additionally, a sense of thedistribution may be obtained, which in this instance the distributionseems to be rather uniform.

Repeated measurements in different parts of the touchscreen device 104(e.g., top left corner, center, bottom right corner) may yield histogramdistributions of the same kind that are shifted in time. Manually(visually) verifying that the distributions are of the same kind (orautomatically using a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, although it may be quitesufficient to look at the histograms) is a step for building theconfidence of the measurement process. Both DOWN and UP event latenciesmay be measured. In an implementation, the latency distribution isquantified using a range of possible latency values.

In one or more implementations, the touch digitizer operates in threepipelined stages:

-   -   Scan the raw touch image    -   Process the image    -   Report touch contacts

The three mentioned pipes may run in parallel. For example, the firstpipe scans the image while the second may process the previously scannedimage, and the last pipe may report contacts from the one beforeprevious. This allows a prediction to be generated for histogramdistribution based on the scanning rate frequency “f” for period “T”. Inthe example below, an assumption is made that the scanning frequency is100 Hz (10 ms for scanning period) and interlacing does not occur (forsimplicity), although other examples are also contemplated.

In a “best case scenario” for top-left corner of the touchscreen device104 is that contact occurs a moment before scanning beam scans thatcorner. The beam may scan an entire image before processing may occur,which may add ten milliseconds of latency as further described inrelation to FIG. 8. Processing may take up to ten milliseconds, andreporting may take from zero to “bInterval” milliseconds in thisexample. In an ideal case, bInterval is set to one so that overallhardware latency for this particular case is set to 20-21 milliseconds.

In a “worst case scenario,” contact of the conductor may have “justmissed” the scanning beam as also shown an described in relation to FIG.8. This may add an additional scanning period (e.g., T equals tenmilliseconds) to the overall hardware latency, which would become 30-31milliseconds.

The distribution between the best and the worst case scenarios maydepend on the position of the scanning beam in the moment of contact,and it may be safe to assume that this distribution is uniform. Anexample of an ideal uniform distribution 600 with mentioned parametersis given in FIG. 6.

A similar distribution may be expected for the bottom right corner ofthe digitizer, the difference is that scanning beam does not finishscanning of the entire image, reducing the overall hardware latency bythe scanning period, e.g., ten milliseconds. A histogram distribution700 of ideal hardware latency for the bottom right corner is presentedin FIG. 7. From these figures it is shown that an ideal latency rangefor a 100 Hz scanning touchscreen device 104 is about 10 to 31milliseconds. The same distribution histograms may stand for both DOWNand UP events.

Probabilistic Latency Modeling

In this section a probabilistic end-to-end latency model is described,which may employ parametric statistics. At the end, a methodology isalso described for obtaining end-to-end latency measurements as well astechniques of fitting that data to parametric distributions.

FIG. 8 depicts an example implementation showing first and second cases802, 804 in which a touch occurs directly after and before a scan by adisplay device, respectively. Although this discussion focuses onhardware latency, these techniques may also be used for graphics card orUSB poll latencies as well.

A touch processing pipeline typically starts with a raw signal scan,where each row-to-column intersection is scanned for change of electricfield, e.g., change of effective capacitance. The scanning process maybe performed at about fifty to two hundred frames per second, such asdue to physical restraints imposed on the device which may includelinear resistance of the ITO layer lines, mutual capacitance, combinedyielding RC time relaxation constant, noise from display further impairsthe scanning rate, and so on. It should be readily apparent that otherscanning rates are also contemplated.

As shown in a first case 802 of FIG. 8, a scan is shown through the useof arrows and a finger of a user's hand 108 is shown as positioned“behind” the scan, e.g., the scan has already passed a point of contactof the finger against the touchscreen device 104. Thus, the touch inputhas occurred just after (e.g., 20 ns after) a corresponding position isscanned. Since the contact occurs just after the scanning took place,this touch input may remain unnoticed until the next scanning cycle.Consequently, ten to twenty milliseconds of latency may be introduced,depending on the scanning rate.

As shown in the second case 804, however, a touch input is detected“right away.” In other words, a coordinate that corresponds to the touchinput is scanned approximately when contact was achieved. This is shownas the touch input corresponding with the arrow of the scan. Therefore,in this case scan latency is not introduced. Thus, from these examplesit may be readily understood that scanning alone introduces variablelatency depending on the position and timing of touch contact anddepending on the scanning rate.

With this in mind, actual latency may be modeled. Since this examplemodel is probabilistic, latency is modeled as a random variable L. Eachpart of end-to-end touch processing pipeline contributes and thereforeeach part may be modeled as another random variable with knowndistribution, but with unknown parameters of that distribution which maybe described as follows:L=L _(E2E) =L _(HW) +L _(USB) +L _(INPUT STACK) +L _(GRAPHICS) +L_(SCREEN)It should be noted that in one or more implementations each of thecomponents can be considered independent of another for practicalpurposes, although other scenarios may also exist that involvecomponents that are dependent on one another.

The list of contributing parameters may be defined as follows. In thefirst approximation L_(HW) is a random variable with a uniformdistribution of range [l_(HW1),l_(HW2)]. A decent first approximationfor l_(HW1) and l_(HW2) is closely related to the scanning rate f(l_(HW1)=1/f, l_(HW2)=2/f). Another approximation incorporatesadditional time for processing and reporting, which may depend on thenumber of contacts being traced. Another approximation may include theposition of the touch contact, as this alone significantly influenceshardware latency.

Consider this test case, two distinct touch points, one in the top leftand the other in the bottom right corner of the digitizer. Furtherconsider different relationships in relation to the scan for each ofthese cases, one in which the scan occurred “right before” the touchinput and another one in which the scan occurred “right after” the touchinput. For the top left point, latency numbers would be 1/f and 2/f (fbeing the scanning rate), while for the bottom right point latency wouldbe 0 and 1/f. This shows a significant difference between latencies inone compared to the other part of the touchscreen 106.

Additionally, USB polling frequency (125 Hz by default for low speeddevices, 1000 Hz for full speed devices) is responsible for the secondcomponent of the end-to-end latency described above. This component maybe modeled with a random variable with a uniform distribution of range,e.g., [0, 8 ms], [0, 1 ms], and so on.

Input stack processing may be modeled with a fixed (unknown) parameter.Graphics rendering L_(GRAPHICS) may be modeled as a random variable witha uniform distribution of range [0, 17 ms] for 60 Hz refresh rate.Screen latency may be modeled with a fixed (unknown) parameter, usuallybetween fifteen to thirty milliseconds.

After the breakdown, the latency equation may be rewritten in thefollowing way:L=L _(E2E)=U_([l) _(HW1) _(,l) _(HW2) _(])+U_([0,l) _(USB)_(])+f_(INPUT STACK)+U_([0,l) _(GRAPHICS) _(])+f_(SCREEN)where U[a, b] stands for uniform distribution in range [a, b], and fcstands for fixed (but unknown) parameter describing c. Thus, latency maybe modeled using the following generalized expression:L=U_([0,l) _(Hardware) _(])+U_([0,l) _(Bus)_(])+f_(INPUT STACK)+U_([0,l) _(GRAPHICS) _(])+f_(SCREEN)where U[a, b] stands for uniform distribution in range [a, b], and fcstands for a fixed parameter describing c.

Once modeled, data may be acquired and then parametric statisticsmethods may be used to find a “best fit” between the model and the data.In this way, a model having a relatively higher degree of accuracy maybe obtained along with an ability to estimate confidence level for thefitted model.

An example measurement technique is now discussed. In this approach todata acquisition, a target rectangle rendered on the screen is moved(e.g., at constant velocity) and a user is asked to follow therectangle, e.g., with a finger of the user's hand, using a robot, and soforth. In one or more implementations, the speed of movement of therectangle is chosen such that a user can successfully follow therectangle with desired accuracy, e.g., to follow a 20 cm/s movingrectangle with as low as 0.05 cm/s variation which is 0.25% variation.

To perform the test, the target rectangle is moved on the screen at agiven velocity, e.g., 20 cm/s using an elliptic curve. The user is thenasked to follow the rectangle using a touch input, e.g., the finger ofthe user's hand 108.

Touch messages are then monitored to measure average velocity andvariance of speed for the cycle. Based on average velocity and variance,N (usually 3-5) out of M (total number of cycles user circled around,usually ˜20) cycles are selected. The data is then analyzed to find amodel that accurately represents the data. For example, the average andvariance of the tracking can be used to calculate a “best fit.” Thisanalysis may be performed without modeling the presence of the finger ofthe user's hand 108.

Actual end-to-end latency may be calculated in the following way. Foreach touch message received, the distance between reported touch inputcoordinates and current position of the rendered rectangle is obtained.This distance may be expressed in any desired unit, e.g., centimeters.Velocity information (average and variance) was already obtained asdescribed above. Therefore, for each sample the latency may be modeledas: L_(E2E)=d/ν, where d is distance in [cm], ν is average velocity incentimeters per second.

In one or more implementations, the finger may be modeled relative to acenter of the target rectangle. For example, a two dimensional Gaussiandistribution may be used to model the distance from the finger of theuser's hand 108 to the center of the target rectangle displayed by thetouchscreen device 104.

This distribution has an offset in both directions (μ_(X), μ_(Y)), aswell as variance (σ_(X), σ_(Y)). Additionally, it may be assumed thatthe user may make the same kind of error (e.g., an error belonging tothe same distribution) regardless of how the touchscreen device 104 isrotated with respect to the user, and regardless of the orientation ofthe target rectangle movement (clockwise vs. counterclockwise). Forexample, if the physical screen is to be rotated by π (180°), a Gaussiandistribution with parameters (μ_(X), −μ_(Y), σ_(X), σ_(Y)) is expected.In another example, if the screen is rotated by π/2 (90°), a Gaussian(μ_(Y), μ_(X), σ_(Y), σ_(X)) is expected.

Accordingly, a compensation process may be used increase accuracy of anestimated finger-to-target distance distribution in repeating sessionswhere the orientation is different or where screen is rotated.Furthermore, since the coordinates of each reported touch input areknown as well as the supposed position (center of the target rectangle),this information may be used together with the compensation to performan analysis. The results of the linearity test (as further described inthe “Contact Geometry Tests” section below) are known, and hence theaccuracy of the sensor (e.g., capacitive sensor) of the touchscreendevice 104, this may be included in the model to increase a confidencelevel.

An approximation of the proposed fitting may be performed as follows.Eight sessions may be monitored at the same target velocity, e.g., afull compensation cycle which involves four clockwise and fourcounterclockwise sessions at twenty centimeters per second. “N” cyclesmay be selected from each session based on variance, e.g., three to fivecycles using the same number for each of the sessions.

Each of the distances from the reported touch contact point to thecurrent target rectangle center may then be summed. The average distancemay then be estimated by dividing total distance with total number ofpoints. Additionally, average latency may be estimated by dividingaverage distance by target velocity. The proposed technique results inan approximation of the average end-to-end latency in the touchpipeline.

Calculating Position of where a Rectangle is to be Rendered

In this section, various implementation details are discussed of alatency measurement system (e.g., which may be implemented using one ormore modules as described previously) that may be utilized to measurelatency. The latency measure system may include an application (e.g.,single window) with a message pump and a message handler, e.g., aWndProc message handler. Positions of the rectangles may be pre-computedfor faster processing/rendering, with a number of rectangles chosen toprovide smooth transition, such as two thousand rectangles per ellipse.On WM_PAINT, a real time counter may be used to calculate the index ofthe rectangle to be drawn to perform efficient rendering, e.g., at up tothirty thousand frames per second. On WM_POINTER, a real time countermay be used to calculate an index of the rectangle that ought to bedrawn at that precise moment. Additionally, information about thetimestamp, current target rectangle index, and touch contact positionmay be stored in a memory buffer for faster processing and analyzedafter the acquisition is over.

In an example implementation, a relatively low overhead application isused with a single window that is displayed across the available displayarea of a screen, e.g., with no menus or title bar to reduce overhead,although other implementations are also contemplated. A standard messagepump may also be used, e.g., Peek, Translate, and Dispatch. WndProc mayalso be implemented to be fairly simple, e.g., by having WM_PAINT,WM_POINTER and a few other messages such as WM_KEYDOWN to exit the appafter “ESC” is pressed.

Support may be added for changing the default values of the parametersfrom the command line. For example, default values may be changedregarding a physical width and height of the screen, which is otherwiseobtained with GetDeviceCaps( ), physical width and height of the targetrectangle, target velocity, orientation (e.g., clockwise orcounterclockwise), minimum number of pre-computed rectangles, anddistance to the edges (both horizontal and vertical) of the screen.

As stated above, the position of the rectangles may be pre-computed toimprove run-time processing. For circumference, Ramanujan'sapproximation may be used which is shown as follows:cf=π[3(a+b)−√{square root over (10ab+3(a ² +b ²))}]This function may be used to pre-compute the position of equidistantrectangles on the circumference of an ellipse. To achieve this, aniterative parametric solution may be employed. It should be noted thatend-to-end error of this iterative process may be less than a singlepixel, e.g., a circumference of the ellipse as defined by the rectanglepoints is 0.1 pixels smaller than the circumference of the absoluteellipse.

The rendering process may also be configured to improve performance,below is an example code snip presenting WM_PAINT processing.

FillRect(memDC, &rects[previous], bbrush); // background brushQueryPerformanceCounter((LARGE_INTEGER *) &current); previous =(unsigned int) (((current − start) % module) >> shift); FillRect(memDC,&rects[previous], fbrush); // foreground brushwhere module is calculated as:module=freq*cf/velocityand shift is chosen to reduce the number of rectangles, e.g., to betweenone to two thousand. Regarding rendering, there are several renderingtechnologies that may be utilized, such as Direct 2D (D2D), twodimensional vector graphics (e.g., GDI+), and graphics device interface(GDI).

After both rectangles are filled (as presented in the segment of codeabove) BitBlt is called to transfer joint area of both rectangles to hDC(from memDC). It is worth noting that not each of the 31,000 frames arerendered at each time, but rather those that would actually change therendered rectangle.

Finally, WM_POINTER processing may be used to store information to amemory buffer, such as the position of the touch input as reported bythe digitizer of the touchscreen device 104 and current timestamp (e.g.,position of the target rectangle currently being rendered on thetouchscreen 106 of the touchscreen device 104). Example code that may beexecuted to perform this is presented below.

// get current timestamp QueryPerformanceCounter((LARGE_INTEGER *)&current); if (tic < MAX_TABLE_SIZE) { // message informationti[tic].message = message; ti[tic].x = GET_X_LPARAM(lParam); ti[tic].y =GET_Y_LPARAM(lParam); ti[tic].id = GET_POINTERID_WPARAM(wParam);ti[tic].primary = IS_POINTER_PRIMARY_WPARAM(wParam); // currenttimestamp and rectangle id ti[tic].timestamp = current; ti[tic].rid =(unsigned int) (((current − start) % module) >> shift); tic++; }This information is later used to calculate the distance between thereported touch contact position and the center of the target rectangle.

Another way to measure operating system latency (L_(OS)=L_(E2E)−L_(HW))is by using HID compliant device emulation. For example, a USBdevelopment board may be programmed to report “fake” HID reports, whichcould then be used to process and measure the processing latency. Avariety of other examples are also contemplated, further discussion ofwhich may be found in relation to the example procedures.

Contact Geometry Tests

In this section, techniques are described which relate to contactgeometry tests, with may be employed to promote test repeatability.Conventionally, formal contact geometry tests were not consideredprimarily because it was difficult to reproduce them with accuracy. Withthe techniques described herein, however, each device may be tested anda variety of different centroid detection algorithms may be used. A palmrejection threshold may also be established. Further, linearity of theoutput (for say diagonal lines) may be measured. In this way, a betterunderstanding may be obtained for detection of the connected components(a part of the touch processing pipeline) and accurately measurethresholds used therein. Additionally, reported contact geometry (by theHID report) may be calibrated, as contact geometry is not wellcalibrated in conventional touchscreen devices.

As above, this approach may be based on the grounding effect of a humanfinger has when touching a capacitive sensor. This is because a humanbody is a good capacitor with capacitance ˜100 pF, compared to ˜0.6 pFfor an average mutual capacitance cell. Accordingly, a conductor (e.g.,a piece of metal) placed between the finger and the capacitive sensormay be used to transfer the capacitance of the human body which wouldultimately have the same grounding effect on the sensor. But in thiscase, however, the contact geometry is defined by the geometry of theconductor that is consistent, e.g., does not change regardless of anamount of pressure used and/or a number of times the conductor contactsthe touchscreen device 104.

For example, as shown in the example implementation 900 of FIG. 9, aconductor configured as a flat washer 902 may be used to test atouchscreen 106 of a touchscreen device 104. Flat washers of varioussizes may be used to mimic different contact geometries, which may rangein size from roughly 8.5 millimeters in diameter to 38 millimeters inthis example. Thickness is roughly 1 mm for each of these in thisexample although other thicknesses are also contemplated. This allowsboth light and strong touch inputs to be tested, as well as palmrejection. It should be noted that actual touch sensor pressure (e.g.,differentiation between a light and a hard touch input) corresponds tothe actual contact geometry area as capacitive touch sensors do notreport applied pressure and instead rely on contact geometry todetermine the applied pressure.

For instance, a light touch may be modeled with a contact geometrydiameter of 8.5 millimeters, while a strong touch may be modeled with adiameter of 15 millimeters. Likewise, a full thumb press would then bearound 20 mm in diameter. A contact geometry having a 32 millimeterdiameter will likely be rejected as over a palm threshold on mostdigitizers.

It is worth noting that a hole in the middle of the metal flat washersin this example may not significantly influence the result of the test,especially for the smaller diameters. Thus, conductors may also beutilized with or without holes in the middle.

The testing procedure described below involves use of a drawing programin a “brushes” mode to output a display on the touchscreen 106 to recordtouch input coordinates. For example, a straight edge 904 (e.g., ruler)may be fixed with tape to a touchscreen 106. A conductor (e.g., the flatwasher 902) may then be moved to slide against the ruler and across asurface of the touchscreen 106. The result of this action may then besaved both using photograph of the touchscreen 106 and as a bitmapimage. Both images may then be processed for comparison purposes.Further explanation may be found for each test conducted in thefollowing discussion.

Centroid Detection

A contact geometry testing environment may be leveraged to understanddifferences between various hardware vendors in their interpretation ofthe centroid for a given contact geometry. For example, the testingsystem may involve placing the ruler as fixed on top of the device,sliding the metal piece by the ruler and using a drawing program torecord the action as described above. For each contact geometry size,several tests (e.g., which may be drawn using different colors) may berun to establish and verify the pattern.

Contact Geometry Resolution Calibration

An observation was made that some devices do not report position andcontact geometry in the same scale (which is assumed by the system),e.g., the contact geometry resolution was quite different than theposition resolution. After conducting a test described further below itwas realized that actual resolution for contact geometry was ˜94×53which was several orders of magnitude smaller that the resolution ofposition (˜60000×34000).

Testing procedure involves collecting WM_INPUT data, namely width andheight of the contact geometry. This calibration may be based on arealization that a change in contact geometry size may reflect in changeof reported width and height, and that this change is linear (although ahigher degree polynomial interpolation may be used). For example,reported geometry for various sizes may be measured against the actualphysical sizes of the metal pieces used. The line may then beextrapolated towards the size of the screen to obtain resolution toavoid palm rejection. A simple linear regression function may be used.

For each individual size measurement, the conductor (e.g., metalinstrument) may be moved around and the reported geometry recorded(e.g., 30-100 samples). In this way, the error of the sensor may beaveraged, such as to calculate an average of the reported values, withsub-pixel accuracy if desired.

Palm Rejection Threshold

One feature of touch digitizers involves palm rejection, such that alarge blob is ignored and not reported to the system. For some purposes,it might be of interest to detect a size of the blob which would getignored, namely the palm rejection threshold. In some instance, a singlesize threshold is not used to qualify the blob for rejection, howeverthe test proposed may still give some indication of the size involvedfor this to happen. The test may involve increasing a size of aconductor (e.g., a metal disc) until it is rejected. Additionally,several different types of geometries may also be tested havingdifferent sizes, e.g., both circular and elliptical metal pieces.

Linearity of the Digitizer

Linearity of a digitizer may also be an issue. To compensate, a constantgeometry ensured by the conductor (e.g., metal disk) may be used alongwith a straight line ensured by the ruler to slide the conductor alongthe ruler. The linearity results may be used to compare devices.

Connected Components Processing

Detecting connected components is a part in the touch processingpipeline which is responsible for isolating individual blobs, whichwould later be sent to further processing. Consequently, in someinstances when contact geometry is above a certain threshold size, thegeometry may get artificially divided into two or more connectedcomponents in an unstable manner that produces jitter. Thus, a singleconductor may be artificially divided into two or more connectedcomponents when above the threshold size.

A jitter of this kind is an indication of overspecializing, as it mayresult from an attempt to detect two (or more) touch points. The resultobtained this way may originate deep from the noise level (e.g., beloweffective SNR line) and therefore produce this significant amount ofjitter. This effect may even be exacerbated as the contact geometryincreases.

Thus, a variety of different techniques have been described in the abovesections. These techniques include including measuring hardware latency,touch point accuracy, contact geometry accuracy, orientation accuracy,and centroid detection. Additionally, techniques have been described tocalibrate a touch sensor for touch point, contact geometry, orientationand centroid detection and efficiently acquire labeled data which canlater be used in a training process for touch point, contact geometry,orientation, and centroid detection. Further, techniques have beendescribed to measure sensitivity (e.g., with change of effectivecapacitance to the ground), measure ID tracking accuracy (e.g., with anumber of conductors), efficiently acquire labeled data which can laterbe used in a training process for ID tracking, measure a palm rejectionthreshold, measure linearity of the digitizer (e.g. diagonal lines),measure the quality of connected components processing (e.g., establishthreshold after which more than one contact is reported instead of asingle contact), and detect and establish the relationship between theunderlying sensor pattern and the measured raw signal (e.g., by placinga washer at the different fractional locations).

Example Procedures

The following discussion describes touchscreen testing techniques thatmay be implemented utilizing the previously described systems anddevices. Aspects of each of the procedures may be implemented inhardware, firmware, or software, or a combination thereof The proceduresare shown as a set of blocks that specify operations performed by one ormore devices and are not necessarily limited to the orders shown forperforming the operations by the respective blocks. In portions of thefollowing discussion, reference will be made to the environment 100 ofFIG. 1 and the systems 200, 400 of FIGS. 2 and 4.

FIG. 9 is a flow diagram depicting a procedure 900 in an exampleimplementation in which grounding is adjusted and a touchscreen deviceis tested. Grounding of a conductor is adjusted (block 902). Forexample, this technique may involve data received from digitizers of thetouchscreen device 104, such as the HID report. This technique may alsobe performed without this data as previously described above.

The conductor is positioned proximal to the touchscreen device (block904). For example, the conductor may be placed within range ofcapacitance sensors of the touchscreen device 104, which may includecontact or near contact by the conductor against digitizers of thetouchscreen device 104.

The touchscreen device is tested by simulating a touch of a user byplacing the conductor in a grounded state and lack of touch by the userby placing the conductor in an ungrounded state (block 906). A switch116, for instance, may be used to alternate between the grounded andungrounded stated. Thus, the conductor may remain unmoving yet stillused to test both touch and a lack of touch. A variety of other examplesare also contemplated as previously described.

Example Device

FIG. 11 illustrates various components of an example device 1100 thatcan be implemented as any type of computing device as described withreference to FIGS. 1 and 2 to implement embodiments of the techniquesdescribed herein. Device 1100 includes communication devices 1102 thatenable wired and/or wireless communication of device data 1104 (e.g.,received data, data that is being received, data scheduled forbroadcast, data packets of the data, etc.). The device data 1104 orother device content can include configuration settings of the device,media content stored on the device, and/or information associated with auser of the device. Media content stored on device 1100 can include anytype of audio, video, and/or image data. Device 1100 includes one ormore data inputs 1106 via which any type of data, media content, and/orinputs can be received, such as user-selectable inputs, messages, music,television media content, recorded video content, and any other type ofaudio, video, and/or image data received from any content and/or datasource.

Device 1100 also includes communication interfaces 1108 that can beimplemented as any one or more of a serial and/or parallel interface, awireless interface, any type of network interface, a modem, and as anyother type of communication interface. The communication interfaces 1108provide a connection and/or communication links between device 1100 anda communication network by which other electronic, computing, andcommunication devices communicate data with device 1100.

Device 1100 includes one or more processors 1110 (e.g., any ofmicroprocessors, controllers, and the like) which process variouscomputer-executable instructions to control the operation of device 1100and to implement embodiments of the techniques described herein.Alternatively or in addition, device 1100 can be implemented with anyone or combination of hardware, firmware, or fixed logic circuitry thatis implemented in connection with processing and control circuits whichare generally identified at 1112. Although not shown, device 1100 caninclude a system bus or data transfer system that couples the variouscomponents within the device. A system bus can include any one orcombination of different bus structures, such as a memory bus or memorycontroller, a peripheral bus, a universal serial bus, and/or a processoror local bus that utilizes any of a variety of bus architectures.

Device 1100 also includes computer-readable media 1114, such as one ormore memory components, examples of which include random access memory(RAM), non-volatile memory (e.g., any one or more of a read-only memory(ROM), flash memory, EPROM, EEPROM, etc.), and a disk storage device. Adisk storage device may be implemented as any type of magnetic oroptical storage device, such as a hard disk drive, a recordable and/orrewriteable compact disc (CD), any type of a digital versatile disc(DVD), and the like. Device 1100 can also include a mass storage mediadevice 1116.

Computer-readable media 1114 provides data storage mechanisms to storethe device data 1104, as well as various device applications 1118 andany other types of information and/or data related to operationalaspects of device 1100. For example, an operating system 1120 can bemaintained as a computer application with the computer-readable media1114 and executed on processors 1110. The device applications 1118 caninclude a device manager (e.g., a control application, softwareapplication, signal processing and control module, code that is nativeto a particular device, a hardware abstraction layer for a particulardevice, etc.). The device applications 1118 also include any systemcomponents or modules to implement embodiments of the techniquesdescribed herein. In this example, the device applications 1118 includean interface application 1122 and an input/output module 1124 (which maybe the same or different as input/output module 114) that are shown assoftware modules and/or computer applications. The input/output module1124 is representative of software that is used to provide an interfacewith a device configured to capture inputs, such as a touchscreen, trackpad, camera, microphone, and so on. Alternatively or in addition, theinterface application 1122 and the input/output module 1124 can beimplemented as hardware, software, firmware, or any combination thereof.Additionally, the input/output module 1124 may be configured to supportmultiple input devices, such as separate devices to capture visual andaudio inputs, respectively.

Device 1100 also includes an audio and/or video input-output system 1126that provides audio data to an audio system 1128 and/or provides videodata to a display system 1130. The audio system 1128 and/or the displaysystem 1130 can include any devices that process, display, and/orotherwise render audio, video, and image data. Video signals and audiosignals can be communicated from device 1100 to an audio device and/orto a display device via an RF (radio frequency) link, S-video link,composite video link, component video link, DVI (digital videointerface), analog audio connection, or other similar communicationlink. In an embodiment, the audio system 1128 and/or the display system1130 are implemented as external components to device 1100.Alternatively, the audio system 1128 and/or the display system 1130 areimplemented as integrated components of example device 1100.

Conclusion

Although the invention has been described in language specific tostructural features and/or methodological acts, it is to be understoodthat the invention defined in the appended claims is not necessarilylimited to the specific features or acts described. Rather, the specificfeatures and acts are disclosed as example forms of implementing theclaimed invention.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method implemented by one or more computingdevices, the method comprising: measuring a time delay of a touchscreendevice to evaluate a touch input by: placing a conductor that isdisposed proximal to the touchscreen device in a grounded state;receiving a report from the touchscreen device indicating a point intime at which the touch input was detected by the touchscreen device;and computing the time delay by comparing the point in time at which thetouch input was detected by the touchscreen device with a point in timeat which the conductor was placed in the grounded state.
 2. A method asdescribed in claim 1, further comprising synchronizing a clock on theone or more computing devices that is utilized to indicate the point intime at which the conductor was placed in the grounded state with aclock of the touchscreen device that is utilized to indicate the pointin time at which the touch input was detected by the touchscreen device.3. A method as described in claim 1, wherein the placing is performedusing an electrical switch driven by the one or more computing devices.4. A method as described in claim 1, wherein the placing of theconductor in the grounded state emulates a touch by a user and furthercomprising placing the conductor in an ungrounded state while theconductor is still disposed proximal to the digitizer to emulate a lackof the touch input on the computing device.
 5. A method as described inclaim 4, wherein the placing of the conductor in the grounded state, thereceiving of the report, the computing of the time delay, and theplacing of the conductor in an ungrounded state are performed aplurality of times to generate an overall measurement of the time delayof the touchscreen device.
 6. A method as described in claim 4, whereinthe placing of the conductor in the grounded state, the receiving of thereport, the computing of the time delay, and the placing of theconductor in an ungrounded state are performed for a plurality ofdifferent locations on the touchscreen device.
 7. A method as describedin claim 1, further comprising placing the conductor in an ungroundedstate to emulate a lack of the touch input on the computing device andcomputing a time delay of the touchscreen device to detect lack of thetouch input.
 8. A method as described in claim 7, wherein the placing ofthe conductor in the grounded and ungrounded states is performed withoutmoving the conductor from its position as proximal to the touchscreendevice.
 9. An apparatus comprising: a clock; a conductor configured tobe disposed proximally to a touchscreen device; an electrical switchthat is electrically coupled to the conductor; and one or more modulescommunicatively coupled to the electrical switch and the clock, the oneor more modules configured to: cause the electrical switch to place theconductor in a grounded state when disposed proximally to thetouchscreen device to emulate a touch input; record a point in time fromthe clock at which the causing occurred; and compute a latency of thetouchscreen device to detect the touch input by comparing a point intime at which the touch input was detected by the touchscreen devicewith the recorded point in time.
 10. An apparatus as described in claim9, wherein the point in time at which the touch input was detected bythe touchscreen device is received at the apparatus via a report fromthe touchscreen device.
 11. An apparatus as described in claim 9,wherein the one or more modules are further configured to synchronizethe clock with a clock of the touchscreen device that is utilized toindicate the point in time at which the touch input was detected by thetouchscreen device.
 12. An apparatus as described in claim 9, whereinthe placement of the conductor in the grounded state emulates a touch bya user and placement of the conductor in an ungrounded state emulates alack of the touch input on the computing device.
 13. An apparatus asdescribed in claim 12, wherein the placement of the conductor in thegrounded state, the recordation of the point in time from the clock, andthe computation of the latency are performed for plurality of times togenerate an overall measurement of the time delay of the touchscreendevice.
 14. An apparatus as described in claim 9, wherein the placementof the conductor in the grounded state, the recordation of the point intime from the clock, and the computation of the latency are performedfor a plurality of different locations on the touchscreen device.
 15. Anapparatus as described in claim 9, wherein the one or more modules arefurther configured to cause the switch to place the conductor in anungrounded state to emulate a lack of the touch input and compute a timedelay of the touchscreen device to detect the lack of the touch input.16. An apparatus as described in claim 15, wherein the placing of theconductor in the grounded and ungrounded states is performed withoutmoving the conductor from a position as proximal to the touchscreendevice.
 17. A method implemented by one or more computing devices, themethod comprising: measuring a time delay of a touchscreen device toevaluate lack of a touch input by: placing a conductor that is disposedproximal to the touchscreen device in a ungrounded state from a groundedstate; receiving a report from the touchscreen device indicating a pointin time at which the lack of the touch input was detected by thetouchscreen device; and computing the time delay by comparing the pointin time at which the lack of the touch input was detected by thetouchscreen device with a point in time at which the conductor wasplaced in the ungrounded state.
 18. A method as described in claim 17,wherein the placing is performed using an electrical switch driven bythe one or more computing devices.
 19. A method as described in claim17, wherein the placing of the conductor is performed while theconductor remains proximal to the touchscreen device.
 20. A method asdescribed in claim 17, wherein the touchscreen device employs capacitivesensors to detect the touch input.